The theme for HP Discover 2015, “the idea economy,” faced criticism from some industry leaders during the popular IT conference. Ideas form the basis of the digital economy. Also, as theCUBE cohost Dave Vellante, noted, “HP is still a product company. They’ve got to put their products in front of people.”

Cohost Jeff Frick agreed, but added another perspective. “Some of the customers we had on theCUBE today really demonstrate what the idea economy looks like even in a legacy situation,” he said. “A 20th Century Fox guest talked about their entire business moving from visible assets to digital assets. A Home Depot guest talked about delivering apps to people in the store so they can price shop. These are old-school, hard-goods companies that are really seeing this digital transformation. It’s happening, and it can happen fast.”

Embracing digitization

Frick added: “HP is still really an infrastructure provider. The Cloud has to sit somewhere. But I do like the fact that they are embracing this digitization, because it can happen so fast, either in the case of 20th Century Fox or for this customer-driven experience expectation based on the mobile phone.”

Frick and Vellante also discussed the split between Hewlett-Packard, Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. How will the split affect future Discover shows? The 2015 conference in London, held December 1-3, will be telling.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of HP Discover Las Vegas 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE